It can’t be that employee wages haven’t kept pace, that more Americans feel financially unstable than ever, all of this while companies across every vertical have posted record breaking profits and their c-suite bringing home eye watering multi million dollar compensation packages. It must be the line managers do not understand how to manage and keep our serfs engaged!
As a middle manager with a hybrid staff… it could be both. I’m basically trusting my team to get their shit done without me checking over their virtual shoulders, but is that the best way? No idea. I’m just flying by the seat of my pants. My team has very high engagement levels, so I think my approach is working; but I also have a very experienced team and don’t think my approach would be successful for managing fresh-outs virtually.
I imagine it is a one bad apple ruins the bunch scenario. So long as everyone it’s working then it’s good, but as soon as you eventually get a bad employee trying too get away with doing nothing it will kill morale if not addressed immediately
I’d also expect that one way to buy time is to acknowledge achievements. People like being acknowledged and it won’t stop demoralization from the lazy but it will make it so people understand that you at least see the difference between the two types. Industrial society alienates us from our labor. Few jobs allow us to bask in the pride in what we’ve done at the end of it, so it’s important to acknowledge that it is being done
yeah it could be both but I would counter that without the other things no level of management will increase employee engagement, and manager while part of the engagement formula they are not the largest and can’t be effective in this area until the other layers are met. Call it a corporate Maslow’s hierarchy of needs where managers are near the top with like ping pong and pizza parties at the top.
I sort if see it the same those that complain about how employee loyalty no longer exists but have no problems laying off half their staff before they ask the CEO to take a pay cut, or barely keep pace with inflation for their highest performers.
You have to build a training plan for fresh. Measure at the macro, not micro.
Did the important things get done over the year? Great.
Coach for impact, end to end problem ownership, initiative, efficient communication, follow and follow through.
Delegate mentoring to those who you see as good examples. Credit the mentors for excellence in mentoring. Credit the rookies for improvement.
Micromanaging is not a scalable or effective approach
I was recently asked to mentor someone on another team, but being as though i haven’t had a raise in over 2 yrs and coworkers I relied on are laid off I declined that ‘opportunity’. I would mentor another teammate because it helps me individually, but ill be damned if i stick my neck out for the company who is making record profits quietly shedding good talent and hiring new cheaper replacements.
In my case, I was fully remote for 2 years of COVID and have been hybrid ever since. We started at three days in when we returned to work and are now down to one day in a week.
If anything, my team has gotten more productive, not less.
Do I feel disengaged sometimes? Sure, but my employer treats me like gold and I have all the freedom I need as long as I do good work, respond quickly when needed, and honor my deadlines.
Can’t complain about that.
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Every person is “useless” when things go well or everyone else can fill in (which is most of the time). The point of a manager is handling the snags and keeping it out of others’ hair so they can focus on their tasks.
You only appreciate it when you actually know what good management looks like. It sucks how rare it is, though, I’ll give you that. About as rare as having parents that know how to parent and instruct without the authoritative cliches. (or hopefully that situation has improved by now but I dunno…)
Lemmy is full of kids for whom “management” means the asshole they worked under at McDonalds.
Solid managers shield their people from the bullshit and help them move forward and up.
I’m a solid manager. I started my current job about 5 months ago. I don’t think the staff I inherited had ever worked under anyone halfway decent. Three months in I was still reassuring my team that I wasn’t trying to replace them, I was only hiring people because we were grossly understaffed. Two months later we’re fully staffed, no one has been fired, and they finally trust me.
It’s fucking tragic how poorly most managers do their jobs.
Yeah, you don’t value management until you work a job that requires a lot of cooperation and management isn’t managing enough.
Good management holds your coworkers accountable so their fuck ups don’t become your problem. Good management coordinates efforts. Good management sets goals and expectations so you aren’t wasting half your time on something that only kinda matters until you need the important thing that takes a month immediately. Good management understands the workers and can emphasize their strengths to the task at hand and cover their weaknesses. Good management sends ideas up the chain when needed and can remove obstacles from your path.
And when you’re doing a multi year project that involves several departments, insufficient management is frustrating as fuck.
It’s good and fine for labor and management to conflict. But there’s a reason worker owned coops hire managers.
I swear that image seems appropriate at every second headline I read these days.
If the work is getting done, who the hell cares?
And record profits implies the work is getting done.
Exactly.
As long as I do good work and am quick to respond no one gives a damn how I manage my time, as it should be.
I work remotely for reasons. I don’t want to be engaged. I want to be left the hell alone so I can do my job and clock out for the day.
For real, how egomaniacal are these people that think we should be “engaged” with our jobs aside from doing what we need to do to collect our paychecks. I don’t give a fuck about your company beyond its ability to continue making that direct deposit to my bank. Your goals are not my goals and by extension your metrics are not my metrics. Let me do my job and stop wasting people’s time trying to pretend like you care how I feel while I’m doing it.
I’m not engaged because the company I’m in keeps firing everyone and I spend every day wondering if it is me or someone I rely on who is next. I also got in right as the last of the small company culture was getting strangled by big corp nonsense so I’ve basically just been adjusting from one game plan to the next every month for the last couple years, while listening to what’s left of the old guard talk about how much better everything used to be. I spend more time in meetings about all the different bureaucracies I have to engage in than I do working on anything meaningful
Wow are you me?
You just left out the Brain Storm meeting where we list every job function we have and write it all down, so that it absolutely could not be used to replace us with third world talent.
Oh and then they decide they’re going to be your project managers so absolutely nothing gets done until some normal employee actually takes over, not that they get paid for it.
Somehow the third party consultancy company in India (they are always called something like Avant Solutions LTD) never gets fired.
Was about to say the same thing. I just had a call to inform my team that they are going to change our reporting lines for the 4th time in the last 6 months.
As if that even works.
If you are in any kind of knowing+ problem solving role, a bunch of tasks doesn’t explain having ownership or responsibilities.
That sucks that you are being subjected to that as part of the enshitification.
Do we work at the same company?
It’s hilarious that you think managers have training on anything other than sexual harassment
I like that you made it sound like they learned how to sexually harass employees, not that they got trained on how to not do it or be aware of it, lol
Naw, they get trained on doing it more covertly. Sexual harassment is a core part of company culture after all.
Usually, managers get trained on how to handle it when it’s reported. What to write down, who to tell, that kind of thing. Apparently corporations are neutral on whether you, yourself, do it
I feel seen.
My position went from being a known contributor to a company with an IPO, then we got bought by a mega corp and I’m now an invisible cog in an invisible division of a mega corp.
Honestly, sounds like a pretty good deal to me.
Not everyone is able to navigate corp politics. Those who can typically excel even if their performance is subpar.
Alienation in action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx’s_theory_of_alienation
I was disengaged before becoming remote, and that has more to do with the lack of value my employer has for us than the work I’m doing or the location from which I do it from.
Pay us more, treat us like humans, stop catering to short term investors.
I know plenty of people who are paid too much and get treated very well but still are very disengaged. I don’t think it’s a one size fits all situation.
Another factor could be generic late stage capitalism burnout, that shit is depressing
